Thread by @RaeComm

1/ Mentioned to Celtic fans yesterday, a future task is identifying coaches on the way up. But to do that you need an experienced sporting division. Stuttgart for example have that. Sven Mislintat & his staff (ably supported from the top by @ThomasHitz.)

2/ What do the sporting team do? They set the tone for club DNA, way of playing, scouting, youth, making transfer policy work in football & financial terms, style. The coach is the extended arm of that overall philosophy. He has to fit those values & that style.

3/ So enter Pellegrino Matarazzo, relatively unknown American who had been on the staff at Hoffenheim. Stuttgart decided he was a fit for their way of playing, beliefs. No worries about his inexperience as a head coach at a high level. They saw a fit for themselves and acted.

4/ Stuttgart fans this season have been rewarded with eye catching and lethal counter attacking football. That was the fit they wanted. They researched, identified, believed and acted. They got Matarazzo before he became a name.

5/ Matarazzo does & talks first team tactics (as an applied maths grad at Columbia Univ he’s proving very adept at that!) He’s a coach not a manager. He doesn’t do transfers, overall philosophy, scouting, bigger picture. That’s left to the sporting division at the club.

6/ Some day Stuttgart may lose him. But will they tear up who they are by giving the keys to the kingdom to a “manager” with his own ideas and signing targets? No, of course not. They’ll have done their homework in terms of which coaches fit Stuttgart. Continuity of philosophy.

7/ The main point is it seems to me many is Scotland think all you need to do it have a “DOF.” Alas it’s not one job. Done properly it’s an entire division of experienced people covering all the bases, singing from the same hymn sheet. The coach is the last piece of that puzzle.

8/ Some will say, that sounds really expensive. But it Germany they would say what’s too expensive is rolling the dice on a new manager with new ideas of his own whenever things go awry. Besides what makes a good coach an expert in sustainable transfer models that can add value?

9/ People often ask if there’s a good German coach who would take the Celtic job? There are plenty of great German coaches but they would want to know - what is the underlying philosophy, project, structure? Remember their experience is as coaches under a sporting division.

10/ So if you’re going to do it this way, needs to be done rigorously. That means no sporting appointments because someone played for the club at the highest level, etc etc. It’s a high pressure role with a different skill set. Do homework and get a sporting team with know how.

11/ I realise this represents a sea change and no one likes change. But it’s not so long ago people scoffed at the idea of specialist coaches for individual aspects of ⚽️. Hope this has helped shed light on a model that works for clubs at all levels in a country to learn from.